tonight. stay with fox news channel. i'm off tomorrow night. here's huck bee. the barack obama administration pushes for military budget cuts. will our shrinking military be ready to fight off future attacks? and harry reid says obamacare nightmare stories are made up lies. >> there are plenty of horror stories being told. those tales turned out to be just that, tales. >> trying telling that to a woman who lost coverage for our cancer medication. plus arizona's governor vetoes the state's religious freedom bill. >> i sincerely believe that senate bill 1062 has the

potential to create more problems than it purports to solve. >> tonight the president of the group that pushed for the bill responds. >> ladies and gentlemen, governor mike huckabee. >> thank you very much and welcome from the fox news studios in new york city. amazing developments this week with the world super powers and their military forces. on saturday russia's parliament approved the request to use military force in ukraine, a country on the brink of civil war after weeks of unrest between pro russian easterners and the protestors calling for freedom. this is after president obama made this statement to reporters. >> just days after the world

came to russia for the olympic games it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world and indeed the united states will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for military intervention in ukraine. >> critics say the warning was weak. fox news learned from a senior u.s. official that the pentagon has not prepared any military con tingsys for ukraine. as putin flexes russia's military muscle, the president obama administration this week is making proposals that would shrink our military. when chuck hagel was nominated to be secretary of defense, i strongly objected based on his record as a senator and some of his comments about our allies in the middle east that absolutely scared the living day lights out of me. my fears, they were not unfounded. as this week hagel proudly announced his proposal to further gut the military readiness of our nation by

drausic troop reductions and cuts to our families and family health care. for the past 100 years presidents and our nation's warriors have warned of putting our guard down. both democrat and republican presents from coolidge to roosevelt to eisenhower to reagan reminded us that readiness to fight is the foundation of freedom. the best minds in our nation's history warned of lulling ourselves into the stupid stupor of thinking that the world would be safer and more peaceful if we just holstered our guns and swords. it's folly to think such nonsense. the best way to preserve freedom, keep the peace and protect security is to have a military that's so overwhelmingly powerful that no one on earth would want to poke it into action.

frankly, i don't give a rat's rear if punk nations like north korea or bully nations like iran like us, matters not at all to me. i want them to fear us. i want them to know that if they should so much as raise their hands against us, they would have to pick that hand up off the ground in the next instance. yet here we go again, fooling ourselves into thinking that we can protect ourselves on the cheap and asking a shrinking number of military volunteers to take on a growing number of assignments and deployments. i'm just back from 11 days in israel where every 18-year-old male gives his country three years of military service. every 18-year-old female gives her country two years of mandatory military service. after that they got to serve 20 years as a reservist and for the rest of their lives they've got to be ready to take up arms to fight to the last drop of blood to keep from enduring another

ha holocaust. as my close friend points out, less than one percent of americans will serve in the military. we're willing to defend our nation with what he calls o.p.k., other people's kids, instead of recruiting or drafting enough people to fully staff, we just send a dwindling number of willing volunteers to second and third and even fourth deployments. and we treat the national guard and reservists as if they're full time. i saw some of the national guard troops under my command in arkansas called up for federal duty for three or more overseas deployments. when we do that, we increase the likely hood of them being killed or disabled for life, not to mention the mental illnesses they will return with. when more of our soldiers commit suicide than are killed by the taliban, it's time to use our brains instead of asking other

people's k to get theirs destroyed. three fourths of the department of defense budget is for hardware, bureaucracy and contractors. if we need to cut something, the last thing we ought to cut is the pay and benefits for the uniformed personnel who are getting shot at. cut the desk jockeys. cut the lucrative contracts that make pals of the politicians rich. even cut the payouts to able bodied people who take a government check but have never offered anything back in return. if we have to give them a check, give them a uniform to go with it. in the meantime -- [ applause ] >> in the meantime, protecting our nation is not just the business of the army, air force, navy, marines and coast guard. it's all our business. when ought to ground air force one before we ground the fighter squadron. [ applause ] >> and we ought to end subsidies

for congressional pensions before we cut pay to the soldiers. i want a military so ominous that not even a half-baked loon like kim jong-un would dare even provoke it. if it takes everybody's kids to staff it, well, then so be it. joining me to talk about the impact that the proposed cuts are going to have on the men and women of our armed forces, we have three true american horrer. one of the original members of the army's delta force who commanded the green beret, lieutenant general jerry boykin is with us today. former commanding officer of the uss sole and vice chief of staff lieutenant general richard newton iii. general boykin, i want to start with you. let's get to the heart of a very

hot conflict that's going on right now. this week chuck hagel says we're going to make some significant cuts. putin ramps up and sends several airplanes, 8 of them just this past week, thousands of russian soldiers to crimea. is there a disconnect between what we're doing and what is happening in the rest of the world? >> well, governor, i think it's very important that we understand that we can cut the defense department, but that has to be done after a careful analysis of who we're going to be up against in the future and ance assessment of what risk wee willing to take. what we see in the ukraine is an example that there are some powerful enemies out there and this process that i just talked about has not been used. this is about politics and out of control spending. >> commander, you were in charge

of the uss cole when it was attacked. when you hear that america will be reducing its overall budget, i think the general is right. there are certainly ways that things can be cut, made more efficient, but are we doing the right thing at the right time with the right amounts toward the right cuts? >> governor, i don't believe so. right now you have to remember, a nation must always maintain both the capability and the credibility to face any threats that may jeopardize our national security interests around the world. right now while we could probably be more efficient in how our capabilities and what we do with them in order to bring them down within a budget, nonetheless we have to look at the credibility that the president is using. we don't have the economic power we once had, the military power that we once had, so we need to be wiser, more careful and more astute in how we employ those

tools in order to safeguard security interests. decreasing a defense budget right now is not the way to be doing it. we don't even have a natural security or military strategy that has been done in the last three to four years. therefore, we don't have a baseline by which we can even determine what our true force structure should be and how we should be exercising it. >> i think most of us would look at the overall picture of the defense budget and say there's got to be waste, fraud, duplication. what is it strategic value of making cuts and if we make some, where should they be made and where should we be spending more money rather than less money? >> up front let me say that it still remains an uncertainly world out there. adversaries still get a vote in terms of where to engage, when and under certain conditions. so we still need to maintain

readiness. what i would advocate for is that we make sure that we still are able to send our sons and daughters of our volunteers as you said at the top of the comments, that they go into any fight, not be a fair fight but a fight where they go in knowing they're going to be ready to win 99-0 so the outcome is shaped before we engage. one more thing if i may add, by reduced defense budget, it does incur increased risk. it does incur less deterrence abroad specifically. in my view and i think the view of the joint chiefs as well is it will increase the -- lessen the margin of error you want to incur. >> i want to get into, is america still a super power? if we are, are we losing that and if we are not a super power, what does it take to get back to being a power that the world is

truly respectful of and that fears. more with your military panel when we come back.

>> we're back with our military panel. i want to get all of you to weigh in on the fact that right now in the ukraine it's a very hot spot and i'm not sure what, if anything, the u.s. can do. i'm not sure it can rally n.a.t.o. to take a stand. is it a problem that we don't have the military and diplomatic clout that we once had? >> again, as i mentioned, the

world is still -- there's an uncertainly world in terms of challenges that can face any nation. from the united states air force, what we have endeavored for decades to be the best world's air force and will continue to be. we control the skies and that's what you have paid the united states air force to do and other things. in terms of us being the world super power, i would not necessarily, however, make us the world's policemen. i don't think we want to do that. but we also want to make sure that we deter aggression, that we will dissuade foes who want to do harm to our natural security interests and the american people. also one thing that's ski is we want to make sure that we assure allies and friends that the united states will be there, that we will provide the necessary military capabilities that go where this nation needs to go to protect our security interests and certainly to protect the interests of the free world. >> general, do you think that we're doing that? are we giving our allies a sense that they can trust us, depend on us, and that we're reliable

if they're in trouble? >> no, governor. the answer is no. if you look at the fact that as soon as the current administration came into power we cancelled a treaty with the czech republic pole and that we had negotiated over a period of years to put missile defense systems in. these were n.a.t.o. allies and we backed out of that for this so-called reset with russia. you look at south korea, japan and especially israel, they do not see us as reliable allies. there are great questions in their minds as to whether we're going to be there if they need us. >> commander, just to get your thoughts on the u.s. navy's readiness and preparation, are we at the place where as far as dominance of the seas we really be in that position where we can answer any emergency anywhere in the world with our naval forces, aircraft carriers and other navy

ships? >> no, governor, we're not. we have a military and a navy today that no longer has the ships available to be forward deployed and in position to be able to react to crises around the world. we went from the top where we were a 15 carrier battle groups at the height of the reagan administration to now we're down to nine aircraft carrier battle groups with one under construction. the navy, if they had their way, would decommission two more aircraft carriers to try and fit within a perceived budget line which takes away the flexibility to be able to react and do what's necessary. you have to have forward presence to act as the deterrent that the generals mentioned. >> the chinese are building more ships as we are. does that give you a little bit of concern that they're vastly outnumbering us in terms of the ships that they've got at sea? >> it absolutely does. when you look at what we are dealing with today, there are a

number of nations, especially the chinese, that are building aircraft carriers. they're beginning to get experience with those at sea. they're expanding their navy's capabilities. as other nations can rely less than the united states to be able to be there in a time of crises, that creates instability around the world. it creates areas where other nations feel an obligation to not just stand up for their own defense but then to begin totally without consultation with allies to work in a manner that could prove destabilizing to countries in the region, the south chinese sea, the actions by iran with their nuclear program because they don't feel we have the credibility to respond in a manner that's going to defend other nations in the region, these are destabilizers that the united states in a leadership role, must step forward and be able to react to. >> i've got about a minute so i'm going to give each of you one-third of that. if you could, name one thing that you think we ought to maybe

just eliminate out of the defense budget, but if you had a priority of where we should put the money, where we're not putting it now that we should be, where would that go? general, let me begin with you. >> first, i think the proposal that certainly the joint chiefs and secretary hagel has made with regard to the aircraft are aging weapon systems. they're 40 years old. we need to modernize our force. i would put investment in the f 35 fighter, the pegasus and continue to invest in the long-range bomber. there's also needed investment in our space capabilities as well as cyber, particularly cyber defense as well. >> general, where would you cut and where would you focus? >> get rid of all the programs that the military did not want that was forced on them by the congress. put your money in the people, quality people. pay them well, treat them right, and they'll never let you down.

[ applause ] >> i don't think anybody could argue with that. commander, final words? >> i think the biggest thing we need to do is ensure that the aircraft carriers get refueled, that we maintain the nine if not ten aircraft carriers that we have. take the combat ship which is proven not to execute its mission, stop that program immediately and eliminate it and start building ships, a next generation destroyer thato have that sea presence. >> i want to thank all of you. i wish congress were listening to you and following the advice. i think it's quite sound. thank you very much for joining us. harry reid says the horror stories about obamacare are lies. coming up proof that they're not lies. we'll be right back.

earlier this week senate majority leader harry reid said all the stories about how obamacare has negatively impacted americans are simply not true. >> there's plenty of horror stories being told. all of them are untrue. but in those tales turned out to be just that, tales. stories made up from whole cloth, lies, distorted by the republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements. >> senator reed, try telling that to my next guest. before obamacare kicked in last november, his mother had a policy that used to cover her cancer medication, but she doesn't have that anymore. steven blackwood joins me now.

it's a real pleasure to have you here. >> pleasure to be here, governor. >> you wrote a remarkable story in the "wall street journal" talking about your family's story, how this had impacted your mom. then this week harry reid makes this comment. let me start, is your mother a liar? >> governor, it's bad enough to lose your health insurance and your cancer medication, but then to be told by the very people who put you in that situation that what is happening to you is not happening to you. it's the height of disgrace. i know these facts may not be convenient for the leaders of the majority and the senate, but i will not have my mother thrown on the alter of his political dream. >> i think every american should be outraged that he essentially accused millions of americans who have lost their coverage, lost their access to the doctors that were treating them to be treated as if somehow they were making this stuff up. in the case of your mother

diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer, believed that she had insurance, she's had it for 20 years and because of obamacare had to be switched to a different walk me through some of the challenges that as a family you faced in this transition from good coverage to not knowing whether her meditation and her treatment would be covered at all. >> the simple fact is that my mother was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer in 2005. it's a lesser known cancer but not that rare. 100,000 people in the united states have it and it was the disease that steve jobs died of. she was covered under her blue cross blue shield plan for 20 years. her plan was cancelled. she was notified directly by the insurer was a direct result of the aca. that was in november. she went with millions of other americans onto the healthcare.gov site which wasn't

working. she then turned direcy insurers to find the plan that would cover her, my dad and three of their younger children. there are ten children in the family. i happen to be the oldest. in any case, she spent many hours on the phone because she wanted to make sure she was getting exactly what they needed. at that period, the details of those plans, what insurance companies call form yyou larrys were not available. nonetheless, they insured her that when she met her hefty deductible, she would be recovered at 100%. if you fast forward two months, she is then informed by them that they will not be covering the crucial medication that keeps her disease at bay. now, i do think it's very important to stress here that this medication which is administered at her oncologist's

office twice a month is not a rare, novel or experimental treatment. it is the common standard of care for people with her disease. >> interestingly, your mother is not somebody who doesn't know how to navigate the health care system. she helped run your father's practice. your father, her husband is a medical doctor. she has worked in a medical office. she understand the jargon, the process, and yet it was virtually impossible for a seasoned professional like her to work through the challenges she faced. >> everything you say is true. she is highly intelligent, competent, experienced in the old system which, to be true, had its problems. if even after an op-ed in a national newspaper, another half dozen hours on the telephone with my mother with humana and two calls by me, she still is not getting covered, how can anyone hope reasonably to get the care they need in the

current system? >> this is why it needs to continually be told. i appreciate your story. i want to talk to your mom and dad some day when we can get them here. i think their story along with yours is a vital one and america needs to here. thank you for joining us, steven. >> thank you, governor. >> real stories, real challenges people are facing. arizona's religious freedom bill was vetoed this week, but did you know that president bill clinton signed the very same language into federal law 20 years ago. it was okay then, why not now? i'll ask the pro opponent of the arizona bill when we come back.

online fox news.com. this weekend hollywood's biggest names are going to gather for the academy awards. so we sent correspondent ryan reese to the red carpet for a preview. what's going on in hollywood? >> there's electricity in the

air as celebritities and political assembled. >> what are political figures do there? >> they're here for movies like frozen, a documentary about the obamacare website. >> i enjoyed the movie "gravity." i wonder if you think that movie will win any of the awards this time? >> i was disappointed with "gravity." i heard it was about a woman lost in space and i was hoping it was nancy pelosi. >> i'm going to leave that one alone. let me ask you this, ryan, what is it that everybody is buzzing about out there? >> governor, there's some really ex traf gent set designs. take a look. >> wow, that looks like a scene maybe from the great gatsby. >> no.

that's michelle obama's birthday party. >> one of the movies that has been talked about a lot this year is "american hustle." just curious, what do you think is going to happen with that mov movie? >> you mean if you kelike your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan? >> we've got to get to some real awards. who do you actually think is going to win an oscar? >> for best animated feature i'm going to toronto mayor rob ford. for best love scene i'm going to president obama and the danish prime minister. >> i can see that. i can see where you would land with that. ryan, i'm going to have to stop you there. look, i don't really think you know anything about the oscars. i think you're just making this

stuff up. >> not true at all, governor. i know for a fact that captain phillips will win best picture of the year. >> how could you possibly know that? >> the nsa told me. >> that i believe. ryan reese thank you for joining us from the red carpet in hollywood. after intense pressure from progressive groups, governor jan brewer vetoed arizona's religious freedom bill. you heard opponents of the bill argue that it would discriminate against gays but what you haven't heard is the bill contains the same language as the religious freedom restoration act of 1993. it was introduced by congress -- then congressman chuck schumer, a democrat. it was supported by jewish groups, even the aclu. it passed you unanimously in the house and signed into law by president bill clinton 8 months

after it was introduced. in 1999 arizona passed an identical bill. this year kathy harris suggested some minor clarifications on arizona's law. that's what was vetoed by governor brewer. kathy now joins me. kathy, i've been amazed at the controversy here. this was a very relative minor change to a bill that was noncontroversial in 1999, 1993 at the federal level and was noncontroversial up until this past week. why the controversy? >> well, in my view, governor, a very small minority was able to make hey out of it to make the bill about something it wasn't. and the veto was for a bill that didn't exist. >> there were accusations this was going to bring back jim crowe. i looked through the jim crowe laws of the deep south where i grew up. i couldn't find anything common to that at all in this bill. it was very minor language

changes. can you help our audience understand exactly what did this bill do? >> senate bill 1062 clarified an updated arizona religious freedom restoration act as we saw courts around the country basically saying that the government wasn't a party to the lawsuit, then the religious freedom restoration act would not apply. that was the main clarification. an individual or a business could assert their religious freedom rights, whether or not the government was a party to the lawsuit so it would be intended to help the little sisters of the poor, the photographer, the wedding cake maker, hobby lobby, those businesses where the government is trying to force them to forego their religious beliefs. >> it was not discriminatory but for example if i owned a jewish dell ka teten and someone said i want you to do bacon wrapped shrimp, then i would be protected because the government

wouldn't force me to do something against my conscience. >> that is what we're talking about. americans should be free to live and work according to their faith. >> i want to talk more about how this application would work and why it's controversial and why it's so unnecessary. we'll tell you how you can link up and read it for yourself, something i'm convinced very few have done. we will be right back>> we're bt

of the center for arizona policy. in may of 2013 star transport in illinois had a couple of muslim truck drivers. they refused to deliver a truck load of alcohol. they weren't required to drink it, just deliver it as park of their truck driving duties. they were fired. they went to the eeoc who sued the company and won and made them reinstate, said they had to be accommodated. here's my point. if it's the government policy to accommodate a muslim not to deliver a truck load of alcohol, what you are really asking for is if it was a photographer or a caterer, someone who would sell any item in the store to anybody, including a person who was gay, but they couldn't necessarily participate in a same sex wedding, is that basically what this bill would

have protected them from? >> it would have protected the photographer, the florist from having to participate in basically approving a same sex commitment ceremony or wedding. you take the pharmacy owner who doesn't want to distribute abortion medication, this individual should be able to live world to their faith and not have the government compel them. the government coercion and what the power of the law is going to be. >> bluntly, you've been accused of a lot of stuff over the past week or so. are you homophobic? >> no. >> are you a hater? >> no. >> do you want to see people put out of business and destroyed or discriminated against? >> absolutely not. i have a great concern that we as americans, that we have the freedom to exercise our religious belief and we're not confined to the four walls of our church, that every american whether you have faith or no faith that you have the freedom to do what our founders intended

to. >> this would be applicable to people who are christian, muslim, jewish or who i guess are as tree yans, it would give them the right to say i want to do business with everybody but if there's something specific that you ask me to do that violates my religious convictions and the criteria was tough to establish that it was part of your faith. >> exactly. we put in additional safeguards in the bill because the way these laws operate, if you assert your religious belief, then you still have to go to court and the court does a balancing test so that the bill if anything is providing more safeguards so someone couldn't claim anything as their religious beliefs. it would protect a photographer who didn't want to be hired by my organization because they don't agree with the convictions that we stand for. it works both ways. >> we're going to put on the screen a contact to my website, mike huckabee,.com. if you go there you can look at the bills for yourself, read them, tell me what's

controversial because i've heard all this talk this week and i just want people to be confronted with the facts and the truth. look at the bills, read it for yourself and then you decide. i think that's probably the most effective thing we could do. kathy, thank you very much for helping to clear this up. >> thank you, governor. >> good to have you here. >> thank you. you've seen her perform amazing sand art. up next joe castillo performs his brand new sand routine. stay with us. ♪ thank my lucky stars to be living here today ♪ ♪ because the flag stands for you've tried to forget your hepatitis c. it's slow moving, you tell yourself. i have time. after all there may be no symptoms for years. no wonder you try to push it to the back of your mind

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he's a former got

talent final list who's made a name for himself in his unique form of art. he's got a brand new routine and a brand new book called "sand story." welcome joe castillo back to the show. ♪ ♪ ♪ i see trees of green, red roses too ♪ ♪ i see them blue of me and you ♪ ♪ and i think to myself, what a wonderful world ♪

♪ i see skies of blue and clouds of white ♪ ♪ the brightness of the day and darkness of night ♪ ♪ and i think to myself, what a wonderful world ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ i see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do ♪ ♪ they're really saying i love you ♪ ♪ i hear babies ♪ ♪ and i think to myself, what a wonderful world ♪ ♪ yes, i think to myself, what a wonderful world ♪

joe, that is amazing. you know, i never see just being in au of being in your ability to take nothing but sand and turn it into the most amazing pictures as you just did. i'm thinking with e, we started this show talking about conflict and war and we landed with this beautiful reminder that it is a wonderful world. >> it is. and even though there's difficulties in the world, god has blessed us with a great place to live and a lot of good things going on. >> joe castillo, thank you very much.@w@wowowpg÷÷owúç÷gçngg

zploo mark twab once said everybody talks about the

r t no one does anything about it. well the same could be said about tax reform. everybody talks about it but no one does anything about it and for good reason. virtually every proposal put on the table gets just sliced to pieces by those who claim they want reform but it truly want only to protect their own tax status. congressman dave camp 067 michigan presented this tax reform proposal this week that immediately had some conservatives and some liberals all aflitter with criticism. the chairman's plan would simplify the tax code and make it so that 95% of passenger pairs would be able to do a short term tax form. it would lower rates but in exchange it would end some current deductions. most conservatives like to lower rates wu not ending the deductions. some have even condemned the plan for not having spending cuts. but let's be fair, the ways and means kmee that congressman camp

chairs doesn't handle spending. the appropriations committee does that. his committee's responsibility isn't how to decide how to spend the money, just figure out how to get the money that we spend. personally i still prefer the fair tax. that would eliminate the irs, it would end taxes and the punishment for our productivity and we'd collect taxes from your consumes instead of our work, investment and savings. until we can get there i would support something instead of living with the current chaos of 70,000 pages of tax code that no one understands all the time while others are talking about tax reform. at least dave camp is doing something about it. i would love to get rid of the horrible winter weather we've had this years but even more i would like to get rid of the irs and its criminal conduct of playing politics with the law and tax code that chokes the life right out of our economy. well that's it for now.

this is mike huckabee from new york. good night, god bless and stay tuned for justice with judge jani janine. hello and welcome to justice. thanks for being with us tonight. you know the united states was the world's super power both respected and feared. were time presidents like fdr, eisenhower and jfk said what they meant and meant what they said. fast forward to the obama administration, clueless on the world stage, completely clueless on the war front. president obama has no war strategy, fickle foreign policy and a paperer tiger immanual.